2021 Ones to Watch: Aakash Badjatya, LERA Consulting Structural Engineers RLLP

Name: Aakash Badjatya

Title: Senior Associate

Company Name: LERA Consulting Structural Engineers RLLP

What recent project, transaction or accomplishment are you most proud of?
I enjoy working on many civic projects at LERA with PANYNJ, SUNY, DSNY, CUNY and DASNY. These projects improve the infrastructure of the city and region, I am proud to work on these projects that benefit all in society and our local communities.

How do you contribute to your community or your profession?
I have been associated with ACEC New York for a while and currently a member of the Port Authority of New York/ New Jersey committee. The committee interacts with the Port Authority agency to understand their challenges, and how the engineering community can serve them and the public better. We facilitate the exchange of industry feedback on agency’s initiatives and share agency’s expectations with our fellow community members. It is exciting to be caught in the middle of this exchange as it gives me the opportunity to be a part of shaping the future and direction of how the industry operates. I have also been fortunate to be involved in ACE mentoring program and CANstruction New York through LERA’s company program, which allowed me to give back to our community.

What led you to your current profession?
Being good at math and physical sciences made engineering an obvious choice for me after high school. I am a visual learner, so I could never see myself writing computer codes or work on electrical circuits where physicality is limited. This narrowed down my choices to either mechanical engineering or civil engineering. My dad is a contractor back in India, so I chose civil engineering with the hopes of joining my father’s business. During my undergrad, I had the good fortune of meeting a practicing structural engineer. Through various interactions with him, I became more interested in the mechanics of buildings and that was my point of no return–I made the choice of pursuing structural engineering as a career. Since then, every day and every building has been different, except none of them have been easy.